TY - JOUR
T1 - A bottom-up method for remixing narratives for virtual heritage experiences
AU - Basaraba, N.
N1 - Funding Information:
The author would like to thank Jennifer Edmond, Owen Conlan, and Peter Arnds, who co-supervised the PhD work from which this paper derives. This research was conducted with the financial support of the ADAPT SFI Research Centre at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The ADAPT SFI Centre for Digital Content Technology is funded by Science Foundation Ireland through the SFI Research Centres Programme and is co-funded under the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through Grant #13/RC/2106_P2.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2021.
PY - 2022/12
Y1 - 2022/12
N2 - Considering the impacts COVID-19 has had on travel and many economies, developing virtual experiences that are well-received by different publics has become even more prominent. This paper shows how a multimodal discourse analysis can be used to as a bottom-up approach to identifying narrative themes that can be used in virtual experiences for cultural heritage sites. A case study on 11 UNESCO World Heritage Australian Convict Sites shows how diverse sources of user-generated content, tourism marketing materials and historical information can be analysed and then remixed into a virtual tour of the sites in the form of an interactive web documentary (iDoc). Although this case study involved a total of seven narrative development phases, this paper focuses on two phases, namely how the user model and content model were determined. These models were later used to develop the resulting iDoc prototype. The user model focused on the prospective audience of cultural heritage tourists, and a content model of narrative themes for the iDoc was developed through a multimodal discourse analysis. This bottom-up approach of analysing existing cultural data allows for the discovery of the prospective audiences' interests as well as narrative themes that can be included in virtual heritage experiences. It also provides a new creative methodology that can prevent issues that may arise with top-down narratives that focus too heavily on one institutional perspective or national narrative and lack direct engagement with or understanding of today's publics.
AB - Considering the impacts COVID-19 has had on travel and many economies, developing virtual experiences that are well-received by different publics has become even more prominent. This paper shows how a multimodal discourse analysis can be used to as a bottom-up approach to identifying narrative themes that can be used in virtual experiences for cultural heritage sites. A case study on 11 UNESCO World Heritage Australian Convict Sites shows how diverse sources of user-generated content, tourism marketing materials and historical information can be analysed and then remixed into a virtual tour of the sites in the form of an interactive web documentary (iDoc). Although this case study involved a total of seven narrative development phases, this paper focuses on two phases, namely how the user model and content model were determined. These models were later used to develop the resulting iDoc prototype. The user model focused on the prospective audience of cultural heritage tourists, and a content model of narrative themes for the iDoc was developed through a multimodal discourse analysis. This bottom-up approach of analysing existing cultural data allows for the discovery of the prospective audiences' interests as well as narrative themes that can be included in virtual heritage experiences. It also provides a new creative methodology that can prevent issues that may arise with top-down narratives that focus too heavily on one institutional perspective or national narrative and lack direct engagement with or understanding of today's publics.
KW - digital storytelling
KW - virtual heritage
KW - cultural analysis
KW - big data
KW - cultural heritage tourism
KW - UNESCO World Heritage Sites
KW - Australian Convicts Sites
KW - transmedia2
KW - USER-GENERATED CONTENT
KW - ISSUES
U2 - 10.1177/13548565211048968
DO - 10.1177/13548565211048968
M3 - Article
SN - 1354-8565
VL - 28
SP - 1531
EP - 1554
JO - Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies
JF - Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies
IS - 6
M1 - 13548565211048968
ER -